Oct 7, 2014

In about a week from now, Apple plans to hold its second fall event to unveil the rest of the stuff it has prepared for this year. This includes a new iMac and a new iPad.

The latter will reportedly boast minor design changes and substantial enhancements on the inside. This, according to a leak by The Michael Report.

The display

The blog’s sources say, “the new iPad Airs will come with a fully-laminated display [...] which means that it’ll be quite a bit thinner than the current iPad Air.” The iPhone has had a laminated display for quite some time now. Because of the display enhancement, and probably other factors too, “iPad Air 2 is around 0.5 mm thinner than the current iPad Air,” according to the sources.

The design

Technically, the iPad Air 2 is a redesigned version of the original. But the changes are so small you probably won’t spot them until after a few minutes of usage. “Based on what we’ve seen, the form function of the iPad Air 2 is identical to the current iPad Air’s and there are no changes in the bezel,” the source reveals.

Some of the most notable changes include:

the mute/orientation-lock switch is no longer available, “with sources from within Apple telling us that it was a necessary move to achieve the thinner profile of the new tablets”;

there will be a Gold option, in addition to Space Gray and Silver;

the speaker grills will merge into a single strip and will sport larger holes.

Also, Apple will market the iPad Air 2 as the thinnest tablet out there, the sources note.

Camera, chips, Touch ID

Apple is reportedly upgrading both the front-facing camera and the rear-facing one. The FaceTime cam is getting support for 720p video calling, while the one on the back is getting an 8-megapixel sensor just like the iPhone line. No word on the optics used in the tablet. The device will adopt the new generation of A8 processors and will gain an extra gig of RAM, for a total of 2GB. The sources note that there’s a possibility Apple will ditch the 16GB storage option to start at 32GB. The maximum storage capacity remains 128GB in the iPad Air 2, while only the iPad mini line will continue to offer the 16GB options.

iPad Air 2 will be the first Apple tablet to get the Touch ID fingerprint sensor for unlocking the device and authenticating purchases. The hardware enhancement will go hand in hand with Apple Pay integration, which is also part of the iPad Air 2 upgrade.